Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marianne Moore
-
Standard Name: Moore, Marianne
Birth Name: Marianne Craig Moore
MM
was a pivotal figure in US poetry of the twentieth century. A recent editor has written that no major poet is cherished more and known less from that period in America.
Moore, Marianne. “Introduction”. The Poems of Marianne Moore, edited by Grace Schulman, Faber, p. xix - xxx.
xix
As well as poetry, MM
wrote translations, essays, criticism, and personal letters. She had an influential period as editor of the modernist journal the Dial. Her poems are characterised by precise, irregular, unrhymed verse forms and minutely detailed observation, often of semi-mythical animals used as ways of talking about the human condition. Always reluctant to let her work go out of her hands, and often self-deprecating about it, she published few books and let much of her poetry remain in periodicals.
This brought her work to a large and enthusiastic audience. Sylvia Plath
wrote to SS
declaring herself a fan. Several poems were printed in US papers and periodicals to prepare for the American edition in...
Literary responses
Gertrude Stein
GS
was disappointed at the small enthusiasm the book generated when it was published. Only Marianne Moore
reviewed it favourably. Katherine Anne Porter
despaired of its length and density, but argued that to shorten it...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
Again the story unfolds in a small country village. It centres on the friendship of three women: Frances, a painter who was formerly a governess, and the younger Liz and Camilla, who come to stay...
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
The Egoist Press
went on to publish Dora Marsden's The Definition of the Godhead, Eliot
's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Pound
's Dialogues of Fontenelle, Lewis
's Tarr,...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW
and Bryher
were good friends who collaborated on publication projects (Marianne Moore
's Poems, H. D.
's Hymen, and others) and travelled together.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.